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Unanswered questions and unquestioned answers

Nothing terrifies me more than to encounter a person who has all the answers. They make me want to walk away every time. Sometimes, I actually want to run.

First, let me clarify what I am not talking about. Decision-making individuals do not scare me. Even when they make mistakes, and they will, they do not frighten me in the least. Doesn’t matter to me if they make a quick decision, or an agonizingly slow decision, as long as they have the knowledge, experience and wisdom to back it and the courage to stand on it.

Man’s recorded history (yours and mine) will rule such individuals right or wrong eventually. So be it. I have no problem with such persons or the history we attempt to record about them. They are educating themselves, acting on what they know, and making mistakes every day. They are human. They will. And we will all learn from their courageous action.

Now for the ones who scare me ...

Tell me what are you more comfortable with: unanswered questions or unquestioned answers?

Think about it.

Unanswered questions abound. They stir me to wonder, to want to search, to make foolish demands, to be angry. Truth be told I suppose I love unanswered questions compared to unquestioned answers.

A person of faith or one with no professed faith at all who far too quickly offers pat, canned, programmed answers really frightens me. I don’t even like to be in their presence.

One might suggest and has suggested to me that Jesus had answers.

That he did. But were they pat, canned, programmed and the same for everybody in every situation?

What I consider to be one of the most poignant recordings in Scripture is found in Matthew 26. There the former tax collector describes a night of agony for Jesus Christ. So torn was he after the last supper with his disciples that he asked three of them to go off alone into the garden with him and pray that his cup might pass from him.

Got that?

Our Christian faith teaches us that Jesus came to die. Scripture would lead us to believe He knew it. Had known it from the beginning; actually from way back, from further back in time than any of us can conceive of as a beginning.

Jesus knew the plan. He knew His Father’s will. He knew the plight of man. He knew why he had come to earth. But when the rubber hit the road, when the moment of betrayal and pain came that pointed to the agonizing separation from His Father that was about to happen as to chose to take on the sins of the world ... well, folks, he asked the Father if there could be some other way.

Been there, huh? Well, maybe not there. But you’ve known what you have had to do many times and at the last minute questioned the wise or required action. Sure you have. At least I hope you have. Because, if you have, then you do not belong to that group of folks who grab on to unquestioned answers and ride the ever-changing winds of time on them.

One more Scripture passage intrigues me this week. Has intrigued me for years. Isaiah, the prophet, quotes God: “Come now and let us reason together, though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow.”

It delights me to no end, humbles me, excites me, mesmerizes me really, to consider that the Lord of the ages, the Heavenly Father to whom Christ prayed that last night in the garden, the God to whom I pray daily, is willing to reason with me.

Yeah, even when my hubby or my sons or closest friends will tell you I cannot be reasoned with, my God will reason with me. He does. He always has.

In this age of growing uncertainty among ever-increasing knowledge, and especially during this Christmas season, I invite you to ask your life questions boldly. Live the questions. Breathe them. Move in and out among them. Trust them.

I’ve told you before and I will tell you again: the questions themselves offer far more answers than the answers ever will.

Again I ask, what are you more comfortable with: Unanswered questions or unquestioned answers?

Just wondering, and wishing you and yours a glorious holiday season filled with comfort and joy and Light. I love you all.